Intel Corp (INTC)

[ChipGeek]

Hypothetical question:

Suppose that Nokia drops MeeGo and switches to Android.

Given how we are _this_ close to a MeeGo-powered phone using Intel silicon, would Intel be better off building and marketing its own phone at that point? Ya think there might be a market for an open-source Intel Phone?

I've heard a couple conflicting rumors about porting Android to run on Atom. On the one hand, I've heard that a big reason that Intel needs an OS like MeeGo is because it's open-source, and Intel folks have made many tailor-made changes to the guts of the OS to work in close harmony with the power states supported by Atom. So supposedly, some of the Atom's competitive power consumption is dependent on tightly-integrated OS support. The corollary to this rumor is another rumor that Google has expressed no interest in spending resources to help improve Android to run on Atom. This makes sense to me...why would they, when there is plenty of hardware out there that runs Android perfectly fine?

On the other hand, I talked to an Intel software guy about a year ago who said that such concerns are overblown, and he was confident that Intel could pull off an Android port.

I would love to believe that guy, but considering how there has been absolutely nothing out of Intel regarding even the possibility of Android, I have to wonder if the technical reasons to stick with MeeGo are just too compelling.

Who knows, maybe Intel has been doing a secret Android port and kept it under wraps so as not to upset their partners in Finland. It would be funny if Nokia has been thinking along the same lines, they announce a surprise on Friday that they have Android running on a Nokia phone, quickly followed by an Intel announcement that they have Android running on Intel silicon, and they quickly begin working together again...